the basic principles of...

Chapter One

The Basic Principles of Homeopathy

Without a doubt, this is the most important chapter in this book.In it, you’ll learn what homeopathy is and how it differs from con-ventional Western, or allopathic, medicine. I’d wager you’re proba-bly just looking to learn about a few homeopathic remedies so youcan help your children, and I promise that you’ll find such infor-mation in these pages. Yet homeopathy differs enormously fromconventional medicine. So before you can set out on a course ofhomeopathic healing, you need to understand a few significantdetails. Otherwise you may be as astonished and disbelieving asTim’s parents were.

As happens frequently in my homeopathic practice, I saw Timafter his parents had already tried every single conventionalapproach offered to them by dermatologists. Tim was thirteen andhe had an awful case of eczema. Lesions had spread all over hisbody, most looking like various stages of poison ivy, and they were,as Tim put it, “very ugly.” The itching was enormous. Luckily, heonly had a few marks on his face.

Tim and his parents felt devastated. This good-looking, intelli-gent boy couldn’t socialize, as he was afraid that other kids wouldmake fun of him. He avoided going to the beach, swimming in thepool, or playing sports. After all, what if another student saw hisembarrassing lesions while he was changing in the locker room?His parents were also concerned that the eczema wouldn’t get bet-ter no matter what they did. They’d heard from dermatologists thatkids usually “outgrow” eczema. But it hadn’t happened so far.

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COPYRIG

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As far as homeopathy is concerned, the severity of skin lesionsdoesn’t matter as long as the patient is otherwise healthy. In ourinitial consultation, I determined that Tim was. I therefore knew Isimply had to find the correct remedy. One dose of that exact rem-edy would probably take care of everything. Of course, this was easyfor me to say. The parents told me honestly that if not for the utterfailure of conventional treatments, including steroids, they wouldnever have considered bringing their son to a homeopath. In theend, they only came because a mutual friend recommended me astrustworthy.

After taking a look at Tim’s lesions, I conducted a full homeo-pathic interview. The questions I asked were seemingly strange. Iwas mostly interested in what made his rash feel better or worse,and in what made Tim different from other people. I wanted toknow his eating and sleeping habits and about his relationship withthe weather, animals, and people. I needed to understand whatmade this particular child with eczema different from everyone elsewith the same diagnosis. In addition, I needed to match the set ofsymptoms that Tim was then exhibiting with the set of symptomsthat had been triggered in healthy volunteers by a homeopathicsubstance during initial research that was conducted to understandits curative properties. That’s how a homeopath carefully picks aremedy.

After about an hour and a half, I made a decision. I gave Tim a200C dose of a homeopathic remedy called Rhus toxicodendron. Hedissolved the sugary pellet under his tongue and told me he likedits sweetness. I explained to his parents that I’d given him a prepa-ration of poison ivy that had been diluted 10400 (that is, 10 to thefour hundredth power) times. Tim’s father was a chemist. He said,“That’s crazy. Nothing diluted this much can work.” He was alsosurprised that I wanted Tim to take a pill only once. Both parentsseemed disappointed that there was nothing else I was willing tooffer. Nevertheless they didn’t have a choice.

I asked Tim’s parents to wait six to eight weeks and thencome in for a follow-up appointment. Two months later, theybrought Tim back. The rash was gone! Tim was so happy that he

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decided to become a homeopath when he grew up. They reportedthat about five days after taking the Rhus, Tim complained ofan increased rash and itching. But a few days later, the itchingsubsided and the lesions started to disappear. The skin on theupper parts of his body healed first, and then the rash completelywent away.

Interestingly, not all cases of eczema would have responded toRhus. To the contrary, I’ve successfully prescribed many otherremedies for the same skin condition. In homeopathy, we treat theindividual patient rather than suppress the symptoms of a disease.Like Tim, his parents were thrilled with the results of homeopathy.But they still wondered if we should give Tim more of the remedy,just to make sure he would be fine in the future. I explained tothem that it wasn’t necessary or even useful. He was cured.

What Is Homeopathy?

Homeopathy is a medical approach that’s defined by the principleof similars: “like cures like.” Its practitioners use small quantities ofhighly diluted substances that in larger quantities would provokethe same symptoms they intend to cure. In the case of Tim, forinstance, we employed heavily diluted poison ivy to heal an itchyskin rash. The idea is to give the body’s own healing process a tinyboost. All forms of medicine that don’t follow this principle areconsidered allopathy.1

In homeopathy, we appreciate symptoms as being the languagein which the body speaks to us. They show us that the body isstruggling to externalize the potential damage that a deep-seatedillness could do at the body’s core. If we’re seeing various externalsymptoms, we can be fairly certain that deep damage hasn’t beendone yet. If these stop, we can assume that either the individual iscured or the illness has reached deeper to the core level.

In allopathy, symptoms are viewed as being the illness, ratherthan as an attempt to heal, which is why conventional doctorsbelieve they must be suppressed. By contrast, homeopathy viewsthe body’s expression of symptoms as a healthy mechanism. For this

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reason, homeopaths treat a patient’s set of symptoms with remediesthat would cause a similar set of symptoms if taken in sufficientquantity by a healthy person. Like cures like.

The Principle of Similars

Samuel Hahnemann was an extraordinarily intelligent and multi-talented man. Born April 10, 1755, into the family of a poor Ger-man porcelain painter, he had to work from a young age. Attwelve, he was already tutoring Greek. Later on, he became a pro-lific writer, translator, doctor, chemist, and pharmacologist. Oncehe presented a thesis in Latin at the University of Leipzig. Duringthis presentation, Hahnemann apparently quoted sources in eightoriginal languages, including Hebrew and Arabic.

A tragic misconception about homeopathy is that it has no sci-entific basis. This statement couldn’t be further from the truth. Asyou read on, I’m sure you’ll appreciate how much Hahnemann hasdone for modern biomedical science. He introduced many ground-breaking ideas into medical practice. Hahnemann discoveredhomeopathy at age thirty-five by conducting a series of experimentson himself. In the process, he invented reliable research methods.Prior to that, he was already deeply involved with nutrition andnoninvasive healing. We’re talking about the 1700s here! Clearlya man way ahead of his time, without any doubt, Hahnemanndeserves recognition as being the father of modern scientificallybased medicine, both homeopathic and conventional.

Hahnemann’s discovery of homeopathy began when he wastranslating a book on pharmacology that described Peruvian bark,a preparation made from a tree that was highly effective in treatingmalaria. As medicine in his era had no scientific basis, the onlyexplanation offered by the textbook for Peruvian bark’s curativeeffect was that it had the capacity to upset the stomach. It was acockamamie time for medicine. The most respected theory of theera was the doctrine of signatures, which a German mystic namedJacob Boehme had popularized in two books, Aurora and The Sig-nature of All Things, more than a century earlier.


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The doctrine of signatures was a purely philosophical notionuntil Boehme’s predecessor, the alchemist Paracelsus, had appliedit to medicine. It postulated that certain features of a plant carryindications of its medicinal use. For example, plants with yellowroots or flowers (yellow signature) were supposed to cure jaundice.Plants impregnated with the color red (red signature) were consid-ered to be beneficial for blood disorders. The hue of iris resembledbruises, so that’s what the plant was used to treat. Also the shape ofplants played an important role in determining their uses.

Hahnemann couldn’t accept the textbook’s silly explanationfor why Peruvian bark worked so well. He decided to take thepreparation himself and find out what would happen. After a fewrepeated doses of Peruvian bark, he developed symptoms thatclosely resembled the symptoms of malaria. These subsidedshortly after discontinuation of the medication. Hahnemanndescribed this experiment in a footnote to the translation, whichwas published in 1790. Six years later, after a continual literaturesearch and further experimentation, Hahnemann published alandmark article, “Essay on a New Principle for Ascertaining theCurative Powers of Drugs.” In this piece, he proclaimed the dis-covery of a curative law of nature: Similia similibus curentur (likecures like).

You were introduced to the principle of similars in the storyabout Tim’s eczema. Let’s look at another real present-day exampleto see how it operates. Yellow-jasmine poisoning causes severeweakness with significant heaviness in the back of the head, heavyeyelids, and chills running up and down the back.2 The homeo-pathic preparation of this flower, a remedy called Gelsemium, hasshown to be very helpful for treating the flu in people who developthe same set of symptoms.

Superficially, it might seem as though the use of the conventionaldrug Ritalin for the treatment of attention deficit–hyperactivitydisorder (ADHD) follows the principle of similars. Ritalin is a stim-ulant given to children who are restless to calm them. But the waythe medication is typically used actually doesn’t correlate with ournatural law.


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For a medication to be suitable for a specific patient, other indi-vidual characteristics must be present, besides the ones that every-one exhibits. In the case of ADHD, as a common symptom isrestlessness, we would look elsewhere. The same remedy won’twork for everyone. Furthermore, remedies need to be homeopath-ically prepared—diluted and activated. This process is described indetail in Chapter Two.

Another interesting modern example demonstrating the prin-ciple of similars is the conventional allergy elimination technique.First, an allergist conducts a series of tests to find the allergen that’saffecting someone. Then this same allergen is given to that indi-vidual in significantly smaller and smaller concentrations until theallergy goes away. Many children and adults have benefited fromthe application of this technique.

Interestingly, in the same year that Hahnemann published hisseminal paper on homeopathy, British physician Edward Jennerpublished a paper on vaccination. He noticed that milkmaids nevergot sick with smallpox, a terrible, deadly infectious disease. Butmost of them had experienced cowpox, an illness benign tohumans. Jenner cleverly suspected that milkmaids were protectedfrom smallpox by the similar illness. He therefore decided to inoc-ulate people with cowpox to protect them from smallpox. In Latin,vacca means “cow.” His idea worked perfectly. As a result, 1796gave birth to two great medical discoveries, both of which incor-porated the principle of similars.

Testing New Remedies

During his research on Peruvian bark, Hahnemann invented anexperimental method for finding new remedies and investigatingtheir qualities. He called this process a prufüng, meaning a “test.”In English, it’s known as a proving. Original provings were con-ducted using alcohol-based tinctures of various substances. Essen-tially, he took the substance and then experienced a set of


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symptoms, which he recorded in great detail. Healthy volunteers,or provers, also received repeated doses of the substance in questionand then would describe all the symptoms they experienced.

Obviously, people have varying levels of sensitivity to particu-lar substances and therefore develop different sets of symptoms,depending on their individual dispositions. A few of the proverswere highly sensitive to a particular substance and would develophundreds, often thousands, of symptoms. Other provers weren’tsensitive to it at all.

As mentioned in the Introduction, the systematic summary ofeveryone’s combined symptoms is called Materia Medica, an oldname for a textbook on pharmacology. It’s a collection of symptomsexperienced by a pool of provers and also symptoms that arose dur-ing cases of accidental poisoning. At a later point, symptoms curedby the remedy that weren’t in the original provings were alsoincluded in Materia Medica.

Provings were a prototype for the first phase in contemporarypharmacological studies of conventional drugs. There’s a major dif-ference between a proving and a phase I study, however. Phase Istudies are designed to establish side effects. Homeopathic reme-dies don’t have any “side” effects. All effects discovered in a prov-ing are used to match a particular substance as closely as possiblewith the symptoms of a particular ill person. When a perfectmatch—in homeopathic parlance, the simillimum (meaning “simi-lar” in Latin)—is found, a remedy is administered to that sick per-son in order to stimulate a cure.

Double-blind, placebo-controlled homeopathic provings occurredas early as the first part of the 1800s, whereas the first placebo-controlled study published by conventional medical researchers datesback to a 1948 trial conducted by the Medical Research Council onthe use of streptomycin to treat pulmonary tuberculosis. The termdouble blind means that neither the participants nor the researchers ina study know which substance specific participants are receiving.Placebo-controlled indicates that an active substance—a medication of


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any kind—is being compared with a neutral substance, such as a sugarpill. Both requirements ensure that the results of an experiment arenonbiased.

Homeopaths instituted another important research design fea-ture: the multicenter study. The importance of multicenter researchis that it eliminates the influence of unforeseen variables, such asthe character of a regional population and human error. If resultsare duplicated when conducting the same research in more thanone location, that verifies that those results are extremely reliableand accurate. The first multicenter study of a homeopathic remedy(Belladonna) was conducted in 1906, whereas the first multicenterstudy of an allopathic drug was conducted in 1944.

I only present such facts to help you understand how the twohundred–yearlong feud between conventional physicians andhomeopaths has translated into ignorance about homeopathy’s sci-entific underpinnings. Unfortunately, our allopathic colleaguesdon’t usually realize how deeply rooted homeopathy is in objectivemeasures. Homeopathic prescribing is based on experimental datareceived from healthy humans. Its practice is rooted in precise andrational scientific observations.

During Hahnemann’s research and professional practice, hecontinually refined his understanding of homeopathy and hismethods. For a long time, Hahnemann used fairly concentratedtinctures of substances. For an unknown reason, he started to diluteremedies in proportions of 1:10 (called decimal, from the Latinword for ten, and marked with the letter X) or 1:100 (called cen-tesimal, from the Latin word for one hundred, and marked with theletter C). Between each of a series of dilutions, he hit the tubeagainst a thick book ten to twenty times. He called this processpotentization.

Hahnemann believed that vigorous shaking helped to extracthealing energy from the active substance in the remedy: a vitalforce that could produce a response in a patient’s vital force.Frankly, we don’t yet have a better explanation. But we do knowthat he discovered that higher serial dilutions provide deeper and


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longer-lasting results than lower serial dilutions. He didn’t “dreamup” or theorize these results. He just followed the data he wasobjectively collecting from the numerous patients he treated. Itwasn’t unusual for him to administer remedies diluted 10400 times(200C) or more.

Today the majority of contemporary homeopaths from NorthAmerica, Great Britain, and India use ultramolecular dilutions, asHahnemann did. But, interestingly, a large group of homeopathsfrom other countries successfully employ remedies that contain dis-cernible concentrations of original source materials. These reme-dies are still prepared by dilution with potentization, but they aremuch less diluted. Consequently, when they’re taken, they requiresignificantly more frequent repetition than higher dilutions—forinstance, taking two to three doses a day for a duration of a monthor more, as opposed to taking one dose every few months, or evenyears, for ultramolecular dilutions.

The concept of ultramolecular dilutions, although significant,is not central to homeopathy. It’s more important to remember thatduring the process of serial dilution, the tube is vigorously shaken,or succussed, between each step. How remedies are manufacturedwill be explained in detail in Chapter Two.

Extremely Safe and Gentle

Physicians are taught in medical school that it’s better to do noth-ing than to take an action that might harm a patient. This is theguiding principle of medicine and has been for twenty-five hundredyears. According to legend, Hippocrates, the renowned AncientGreek physician known as the father of medicine, was already tellinghis students, “First do no harm.” Unfortunately, we know too wellfrom past experience that conventional medications almost alwaysproduce side effects—some mild and some severe. A cold remedycan make you drowsy. An antibiotic can upset your stomach, causesevere allergies, or destroy important friendly bacteria in your gut.We often accept minor side effects as the “price we must pay.”


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Homeopathic remedies are nontoxic because they are highlydiluted substances. In addition, they have no side effects, althoughin some sensitive children certain symptoms may appear. Occa-sionally, I’ll receive a call from a frantic mother whose child has justingested half a container of a 30C potency remedy. Each containerholds about seventy pellets. Anyone familiar with basic math canunderstand that even if taken at once, the entire contents couldn’tpossibly cause any complications. The active ingredient in a 30Cremedy has been diluted 1060. That’s a ten with sixty zeros follow-ing it (10 × 10 × 10 . . . sixty times over).

Homeopathy is safer than conventional medicine. Look, youreceive instructions on correct usage when either an allopathicdoctor or a homeopath prescribes medication to you. The crucialdifference is that if you correctly follow the instructions when youtake a homeopathic remedy, nothing bad is going to happen. Buteven if you correctly follow a doctor’s instructions when taking aconventional drug, it could have side effects.

The principle of safety has played a defining role in my ownlife. It was a cold Russian winter in 1984, and I was working as afamily physician in Moscow. A doctor in our clinic called in sick,so I agreed to cover her home visits. It was a busy day for me, full ofcases of common colds and bronchitis. As one of the addressesbelonged to a close friend of mine, I left this visit for the end of mytour. It would be so nice to meet him and talk about the Americanscience fiction and jazz music we both liked! Finally, I was at hishome. I rang the bell. A beautiful young lady opened the door, thepatient. She turned out to be my friend’s sister, Natasha. I neverknew he had such a beautiful sister!

After examining Natasha, I diagnosed her with a mild case ofbronchitis and offered her a few choices. She could take herbalexpectorants, conventional medication, or homeopathy. She’dheard homeopathy was very good and was surprised that a localfamily physician knew about it. In Russia, homeopaths are highlyrespected and usually expensive. She was eager to try it. Because Iliked her and she was my friend’s sister, I volunteered to go andfetch the remedy for her. She was instructed to take one pellet


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three times a day. During our follow-up appointment, Natashaadmitted that the pellets were so little and tasted so delicious thateventually she took all those remaining at once.

The results were amazing. Whatever I gave her worked well.She was cured. We got married a few months later and we’re stilltogether. Did Natasha’s treatment have any side effects? Actually,it did. We now have two beautiful daughters.

Hahnemann was firm on the principle of giving a single rem-edy to a patient at one time. Throughout his life, he fought againstthe practice of polypharmacy, or prescribing numerous medicationsto the same patient, a problem that persists in allopathic medicine.Adverse reactions to medications must often be attributed to druginteractions. Two hundred years of experience have shown thathomeopathic clinicians who follow the principle of using a singleremedy receive much better and longer-lasting results.

Of course, finding the special remedy for a special person cansometimes be difficult. But the results are spectacular. Soon you’llsee for yourself.

Consistently Proven Effective

The foremost benefit of homeopathy is its efficacy. In fact, the pri-mary reason homeopaths are enthusiastic about what we do is thatwe are privileged to witness the miracle of a complete cure everyday. Frankly, we never get used to it. Even after practicing home-opathy for more than twenty years, I’m still amazed at how quicklythe human body can recover from a seemingly dangerous conditionafter the administration of a lone tiny pellet. At conferences andsocial gatherings, whenever several homeopaths are in the room,there’s an endless exchange of stories about the numerous “little”cures they’ve seen for acute conditions, such as hives, colic, andpoison ivy, and the “big,” amazing cures they’ve seen for severechronic illnesses, such as asthma and ADHD.

Its consistent success rate was the most important factor inmaking homeopathy popular in the early 1800s, and it has kept thepractice of homeopathy alive in the United States since then,


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despite conventional medicine’s opposition to its principles andmethods. Of course, every homeopathic practitioner has experi-enced failures, yet our outstanding success in curing both childrenand adults motivates us to continue our efforts to find the perfectremedy for those patients we couldn’t help right away.

Samuel Hahnemann became a medical celebrity in 1799 dueto an early success. Only three years after homeopathy’s official dis-covery, an epidemic of scarlet fever swept Germany. Children werethe main victims of the illness, which is a severe form of strepthroat. Hahnemann achieved such impressive results in the treat-ment and prevention of this deadly illness that soon many allo-pathic physicians adopted his new approach and began praisinghomeopathy. The outcome was staggering. Ten physicians gave the homeopathic remedy Belladonna to 1,646 children for prophy-laxis, or preventive treatment, and they reported that only 123developed the illness, whereas the morbidity rate in the untreatedpopulation surged as high as 90 percent! Subsequently, the pro-tomedicus of Prussia, a public health official comparable to our sur-geon general, declared the remedy effective, and the governmentmade the use of Belladonna for the prevention of scarlet fevermandatory. Today the scope of this decision would be similar tohaving the U.S. government recommend homeopathy for thetreatment of cancer or AIDS.

From its inception, homeopathy has been able to treat epi-demics with impressive results, making the approach popularworldwide. In The Logic of Figures, first published in 1900, ThomasBradford, M.D., a homeopath and historian, compared success ratesfrom allopathic therapeutics with those from homeopathy. Here aresome interesting statistics that he put together:

• In 1813, following the defeat of Napoleon’s army by the Rus-sians, retreating French troops carried an epidemic of typhoid feverthrough Europe. When the epidemic hit Leipzig, Hahnemann saw180 cases of typhus. He cured all but two, representing a 1 percentmortality rate. Conventional physicians reported a 30 percent mor-tality rate.


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• In the European cholera epidemic of 1831–1832, homeo-pathic hospitals had 7 to 10 percent mortality rates, whereas con-ventional physicians saw rates of 40 to 80 percent. As a result, a lawforbidding the practice of homeopathy in Austria was dropped.

• In 1854, cholera broke out in London. The House of Com-mons asked for a report comparing various methods of treatment.Initially, homeopathic figures weren’t included. According to thereport, the mortality rate for patients under allopathic care was 59percent. In response to an inquiry by the House of Lords, statisticsfor patients under homeopathic care were then provided. The mor-tality rate was only 9 percent.

• During the 1850s, several epidemics of yellow fever hit thesouthern United States. Today we know that mosquitoes transmitthis disease. William Osler, a prominent physician of that era andauthor of the famous book Systems of Medicine, reported that theallopathic mortality rate from yellow fever was 15 to 85 percent.Homeopaths reported a mortality rate between 6 and 7 percent. Ina similar epidemic in 1878, the mortality in New Orleans asreported by allopathic physicians was 50 percent. Homeopathsreported mortality of 6 percent for 1,945 cases.

• Children have always been easy targets for severe infectiousdiseases, and one of the most deadly of these was diphtheria.Although diphtheria was eventually eliminated by the advent ofwidespread vaccination, before then it was difficult to treat, as itrarely had the same presentation. Almost every case was a life-or-death proposition. Records from 1862 to 1864 in Broome County,New York, indicate an 84 percent mortality rate for patients givenconventional medicine and only a 16 percent mortality rate forpatients given homeopathy. Individualization of the homeopathictreatment was the most crucial factor in its success.

• Another devastating childhood disease is polio. Before thepolio vaccine, this illness used to spread in epidemics, paralyzingand killing huge numbers of children. The most memorable out-break was the infamous polio epidemic of the 1950s. An Americanhomeopath, Arthur Grimmer, M.D., and an Argentinean homeo-path, Francisco Eizayaga, M.D., both reported excellent results


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from using homeopathy to prevent and treat polio prior to theintroduction of the vaccine.

• In 1996, the Homeopathic Medicine Research Group,which was formed by the European Union to determine the effec-tiveness of homeopathy, conducted a large study. It’s important toknow that scientists skeptical of homeopathy were involved in thedesign of the study. The study analyzed outcomes from seventeenclinical trials on a total of 2,001 subjects and showed that home-opathy was more effective than a placebo. There was only a slimprobability (0.027 percent) that this result was due to chance.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) estimate that 10 to 20 percent of Americans come downwith the flu annually. Children are two to three times more likelythan adults to get sick, and children frequently spread the virusto others. Although most people recover, the CDC estimatesthat more than 100,000 people in the U.S. are hospitalized, andabout 36,000 people die from the flu and its complications everyyear. Taking statistics into account, homeopathy is a significantuntapped resource.

The flu pandemic of 1918–1919 is still remembered for its dev-astating death toll. Considered the worst epidemic in U.S. history,with 600,000 people dead, it took the lives of 20 to 40 millionpeople worldwide. In 1921, in a long article about the epidemic,the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy reported that inDayton, Ohio, the overall mortality rate of flu patients was 28 per-cent, whereas in 26,000 cases of flu treated homeopathically,patients had a mortality rate of only 1 percent. Hahnemann Col-lege in Philadelphia reported a similar figure for their homeopathictreatment of flu in 26,795 cases that year. Similar statistics camefrom other homeopathic physicians across the country. Flu seasontypically lasts from November to March. The media-generatedpanic that surrounds it each year keeps the memories of the earlierdisaster alive.


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Cases When Homeopathy Won’t Work

Homeopathic treatment doesn’t work in situations where structuraldamage has been done to a patient’s body, cases such as genetic dis-orders, birth defects, and other profound physical conditions (forexample, side effects from conventional medication or certain typesof injuries). In other words, a condition has an obvious cause thatmay or may not be reparable—but if so, only by some means otherthan homeopathy.

Genetic Disorders and Birth Defects

Homeopathy cannot work if someone has a genetic disorder that’sresulted in significant physical or emotional and mental deficien-cies. For instance, children with Down’s syndrome have multiplehealth issues. Although many symptoms can be relieved withhomeopathy, defects related to intellectual functioning and struc-tural changes of the cartilage cannot be removed. The same is trueof other genetic disorders. They are inbuilt.

Pregnant women who consume significant amounts of alcoholor illicit drugs can damage their babies in the womb. These irre-versible defects can be quite significant. Interestingly, whenattempts are made to treat these children homeopathically, at firstthere’s often a significant improvement in different levels of func-tioning. But eventually, it trails off. The next prescription usuallyresults in a less-intense and shorter-lived response.

Side Effects of Medication

Frequently, it’s impossible to treat the side effects of a conventionaldrug with homeopathy. But there’s a way around the problem.

Imagine that someone comes to the emergency room with aknife sticking out of his thigh and says, “Listen, Doc. You have tohelp me. But you cannot touch the knife!” Although it would bepossible to give the guy painkillers, that type of care would be silly.


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To close the case, all you need to do is remove the knife and sew upthe wound.

In the instance of treating side effects, my advice is to discusspossibly changing the medication with the doctor who prescribed it.

To be fair, I must admit that some homeopaths claim success intreating side effects of allopathic medications. At least one bookhas been published on this subject. Still, the proposition doesn’tmake as much sense as changing medications. Doctors have manydrugs of the same type to choose from and can usually adjust theirtreatments.

Now, of course, an even more reasonable solution is to try tocure an illness with homeopathy rather than conventional means.If you succeed, then your child won’t need allopathic medication.But is this true for every illness? What can homeopathy do for ter-rible chronic diseases, like cancer and AIDS, which don’t sparechildren?

Advances have been made in the homeopathic approach to life-threatening, chronic illnesses. However, conventional physicianshave been increasingly successful at saving and prolonging the livesof patients with cancer and AIDS. A significant amount of moneyhas been directed toward the research and development of medica-tions in these areas. Thousands of dedicated physicians and scien-tists have been working on saving people’s lives. We cannotdisregard these facts! As a parent, you should always consult withexperts in the field before making a critical, life-altering decision.

Reversible Structural Problems

A few years ago, I received a referral patient from a famous homeo-path. Noel, a slightly obese woman in her late fifties to early sixties,had been seen by this homeopath three times without success. Shecomplained of excruciating pain in her right shoulder, and her storywas quite remarkable. Noel claimed that while she was asleep, herhusband, also very large, had rolled over in his sleep, pressed on


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her chest, and dislocated her right collarbone, thus causing all hersubsequent pain.

Every conventional specialist possible saw her. Numerous imag-ing studies, including an MRI, had been performed. They foundnothing. As happens very frequently when doctors don’t findanswers, Noel was pronounced anxious, depressed, or perhaps psy-chotic. As a result, she was placed on many painkillers, mood sta-bilizers, and antidepressants. The list of her medications was longand scary. Certainly, she had many side effects from them, too.Although Noel knew that she was right, the doctors’ studies justdidn’t support her claim.

Noel went to an acupuncturist. No results. Finally, she locatedthe famous homeopath. He prescribed a few remedies for her withno effect and also decided that the woman was probably psychotic.That’s when I came in handy, for I am a psychiatrist as well as ahomeopath. In this case, I made the perfect second opinion.

Noel came to see me along with her husband. The first thing Inoticed was that they both were very honest, normal people, andNoel was suffering a lot. After taking a thorough history, I was con-vinced that there was no evidence of mental illness. I believedNoel’s story. I also knew something that the conventional physi-cians refuse to admit to their patients, which is that there are osteo-pathic physicians. These doctors are specially trained to diagnoseand treat structural changes, even if they are very minute.

I sent Noel to an excellent osteopath, who also saw nothing inthe tests. But an osteopathic examination showed that her collar-bone did move just a tiny bit. In an area so rich with nerve endings,this minute displacement was causing Noel an enormous amountof pain. The osteopath adjusted the problem. Literally, after thevery first visit, Noel felt much better. For the first time in manyyears, her pain was diminishing! In three to four weeks, she was offmost of her medication. She was cured!

This case illustrates a few important points. First, it proves—yet again—that our collective knowledge has many limitations,


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even when we use modern technology. Second, if there is an appar-ent cause of an illness, it has to be removed. Third, do not give upon your convictions about your family’s health. If you know whyyour child is ill, pursue the line of treatment that can remove thecause. Furthermore, medical miracles can happen. I know, forexample, that osteopathic physicians adjust severely displaced col-larbones in newborns. The results look like a miracle, but they’renot. There are many other health care providers, both alternativeand conventional, who can treat your child. Of course, I’ve seenmany so-called miracles that happened with homeopathy.

A Holistic Approach

Homeopathy uses a holistic approach. An allopath looks at apatient in segments, as if under a microscope, and frequently for-gets about the person as a whole organism. A homeopath looks ata patient through two lenses: a telescopic lens, to see the person’sentire health picture, and a microscopic lens, to distinguish whatmakes this person unique. When we look at people as unifiedbeings with a telescopic perspective, we begin to understand theirtrue level of health. Understanding levels of health is important.We need to know how healthy or sick we are so that we’ll knowwhat to expect from our treatment—homeopathic or otherwise—and what various symptoms indicate.

How frequently have you heard about someone with a seriousillness who was told by doctors ten years earlier that he had less thana year to live? I’m guessing often. At least, I have. I used to laugh atscenes in movies and books, where a doctor somberly informs apatient, “You have three months to live.” How would the doctorknow? Who is this doctor, a god or something? I find prognoses ofdeath unbelievable, especially when they come from allopathicphysicians who are consumed by issues such as gross and cellularpathology, testing (of all kinds), and poisonous medications.

There is a way to see a big picture and it’s actually rather easyto understand—that is, after a leading Greek homeopath of our era,


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George Vithoulkas, digested it all for us in his book The Science ofHomeopathy.

Let’s consider the human being as a system of overlapping cir-cles that would be diagrammed like a dartboard. If we imagine ahuman being as three circles of growing diameter, the inner circlewould represent the emotional and intellectual level, the secondcircle would represent the vital organs, and the outer circle wouldrepresent the skin and other less-important organs. According tothis model, the inner circle is surrounded and protected by theouter circles. This is how it is in real life. Our mental and emo-tional functions are the most important ones. Without them, wedon’t exist. In order to provide sufficient housing and energy sup-plies to these functions, we need vital organs. To create support andprotect the vital organs, we need our skin, our skeleton, and all theother devices of our body. When a person is injured, the blood flowis naturally redirected to supply the vital organs first.

I think we can agree that our deepest dimension is the emo-tional and mental self. Have you ever entered a room and instantlyliked or disliked someone there without even talking to him?Think back to college or high school. Perhaps a new professor orstudent entered the classroom and—in a flash—you just knewyou’d get along well. That’s how quickly, and deeply, the emotionalself works. When we’re upset, we cannot function well in anycapacity. Emotional pain can be as strong as physical pain orstronger. The mind is important, too. Without clarity of mind,everything else is irrelevant.

Next comes the dimension of the vital organs. We wouldn’t beable to feel, think, or do anything if we didn’t have a brain or aheart, or a set of lungs, or a liver, and so on. Is this starting toremind you of The Wizard of Oz? Remember how important thesedimensions were: the Cowardly Lion desperately needed courage(emotion), the Scarecrow needed a brain (vital organ), and the TinMan wanted a heart (vital organ).

The least important, albeit still valuable, dimension of our beingis our skin, bones, and other more surface organs and attributes.


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Now when the body aims to heal itself, it tries to express its prob-lems at the most superficial level it can. This fundamental conceptin homeopathy relates to the natural tendency of the human bodyto protect its vital core.

As a child, I went to school with a boy named Michael, whowas mentally retarded. He had a large head, but he couldn’t readeven in the fifth grade. Although this lack of sufficient progress issadly a reality for many students in America with normal intelli-gence, it was unheard of in Russia in the 1960s and 1970s, unless aperson was developmentally disabled. And Michael was. Hisbehavior was offbeat, too. He often was putting his face close tosomeone else’s, peering into the windows of apartments on theground floor of buildings, and cursing. Even during the frigid Russ-ian winter, Michael walked around in just shorts and a T-shirt.

To the neighbors, his mother would sometimes say somethingalong these lines: “Michael is not so smart, but at least he’shealthy.” Wrong!

Michael wasn’t healthy. In fact, he was very ill. His most impor-tant functions were significantly impaired, although the housing forthem (his brain) was pretty large. Please take your time to thinkabout what I tell you next, as it is important. A smart, humorousteenager with terrible pimples is much healthier than a schoolbeauty that sulks around and has suicidal tendencies.

Actor and director Christopher Reeve was one of the mostastonishing examples of the accuracy of this three-level diagram ofhealth. After the horseback riding accident that paralyzed him, helost the use of his body, but he retained his mind and his soul. Atthe core, he was healthier than thousands of good-looking, buttotally dysfunctional, junkies or severely developmentally disabledpeople, because his emotions and his intellect were intact! I’m notsaying he didn’t have bad days, as I’m sure he did. But he wasresilient. He ultimately died because the structural damage to hisbody was too severe.

Of course, there are also cases when a physical illness adverselyaffects a person’s emotional and mental state. This means that theperson is deeply ill—malfunctioning on all three levels. I’ve met


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people with severe cases of cancer who were happy and I’ve metteenagers with pimples who were almost suicidal. The intimateinterplay of various levels of our body and soul creates an opportu-nity to assess a person’s future prospects. A child with severe pneu-monia who’s happy and surrounded by a loving family has a muchbetter chance of a complete recovery than an unhappy orphan witheczema. In homeopathy, when we look at someone’s symptoms, wetake the mind-emotions-body into account.

This brings us to the discussion of a slightly different dimensionof our health. Obviously, the severity of an illness significantly affectsthe whole person. Anyone who’s had a toothache or a splittingheadache will tell you that he felt totally miserable and absolutelycouldn’t function. I frequently hear statements along the followinglines: “I’d rather have my hand amputated than have this terribletoothache” or “There’s nothing worse than migraines!” People saysuch things in the heat of the moment. But how can we properlyassess the level of health based on the severity of the illness?

Levels of Health

We can actually distinguish four major levels of health.

Level One Health

I frequently use the example of a young child growing up on a farmto illustrate the ideal state of total health. Generally speaking, chil-dren living in a natural environment stay healthy. They wake up inthe morning, have a simple nutritious breakfast, and then go out toplay. Or they help their parents take care of the family’s livestockand pets. The constant contact they have with the environmentgives the children’s immune systems an opportunity to learn veryquickly what is a “friend” and what is a “foe.” Every minute of theirlives is spent training the immune system. Thus it grows strong anddoesn’t make mistakes by hysterically overreacting to a harmlessthing like cat’s dandruff or dog’s fur or taking what is a part of thechild’s body for an enemy. Allergic reactions simply don’t exist.


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The endocrine system grows strong. They aren’t bombarded withjunk food and a huge overload of sugar. These children’s emotionallives are also simple and healthy.

One day, a Level One child comes home and says, “Mom, Idon’t feel so good.”

The mother checks out his temperature. It’s quite high. “OK,son,” she says. “Go make some hot tea with honey and get somesleep.”

The boy goes to bed and perspires all night. In the morning, hewakes up healthy and ready to go back to school. Aggression (a virus) has been met with immediate strong retaliation (hisimmune system), followed by a complete elimination of the illness.No emotional or physical consequences of this brief illness are pre-sent. Because this boy is healthy, he needs no intervention, nomedication. If the cold or the flu were severe, one dose of a homeo-pathic remedy or herbal medication would probably provide all thehelp necessary to overcome the illness completely.

Children at this level of health get colds maybe once a year, oreven less often. They don’t have any allergies or skin problems.They’re happy, content, full of energy, and they have pleasant dis-positions. I see them on the street, in my friends’ homes, or in oldmovies, but never in my office. They don’t need medications.They’re completely and independently healthy, and can take careof their daily stresses by themselves.

This is the ideal health we all strive to achieve. Unfortunately,for more children in our stressful and polluted world it seems to bea fairy tale. But let’s not give up!

Level Two Health

City dwellers and inhabitants of suburban areas are familiar withthis level of health, as the so-called civilized environment is terri-bly polluted. TVs, electronic games, and other sources of loudnoise, visual stimulation, and violent imagery contaminate theminds of children. Many chemicals taint the air, water, and food


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supply. Refined foods have replaced wholesome, more nutritiousones. Drugs have also become a regular part of the culture—andI’m not even referring to illegal street drugs.

God forbid a child has a slight discomfort or a low-grade fever!Medication is introduced right away. Products that should remainhidden deep in the medicine cabinet, to be used only in the stateof a real emergency, come out prematurely. If children have ascratch, they get an antibiotic ointment. If they have a pimple,they are given antibiotic pills for ten days. For fever, they getaspirin. The vaccination for hepatitis B is now given to infants attwo days of age. Why? Just in case something happens.

Are any of these interventions inherently wrong? Of coursenot! If somebody has a serious wound or a bacterial infection,antibiotics can provide a lot of help. A particular vaccine adminis-tered to a population from a high-risk group could be lifesaving. Butall of these medications become the enemy of good health wheneveryone blindly uses them.

The discovery of antibiotics changed the destiny of many severelyill children. Their lives were saved. But then doctors started to pre-scribe antibiotics for mild and even questionable cases of infections.As a result, new strains of bacteria developed that were resistant to theantibiotics. So we needed new, stronger medications. A vicious cyclewas initiated. Hormones (steroids) also saved the lives of many chil-dren. Then doctors began prescribing them left and right. Now we’recollectively paying the price. Most of our children’s immune systemsare weak and overstimulated. Their bodies don’t know the differencebetween a friend and a foe. That’s Level Two health.

Let’s follow an imaginary child named Jessica. Her morningbegins with eating cold cereal that contains about a dozen differ-ent additives for flavoring, coloring, and preservation, drenched inmilk “fortified” with different vitamins. The cows that gave the milk were given hormones every day. Residual hormones havespilt over into the milk. Often Jessica’s breakfast is consumedwhile watching a channel on TV that plays music videos or violent animated programs.


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Last night, Jessica sneezed a few times, and her mother gave heran anticongestant “just in case.” But this morning, her nose is stillstuffed, so Jessica gets a hormonal nose spray. And this is only thebeginning of the day! There’s more to come. The list of all theoverwhelming stressors the child faces could take up a few hundredpages! Jessica’s emotions, her immune system, and her endocrinesystem are overstimulated and weak. She comes home from schoolfeeling under the weather. She has a slight fever. Her mother givesher some aspirin. By the next morning, Jessica is even sicker, so shegoes to a pediatrician. The rest of the story is clear: she’s ailing forabout two weeks.

The majority of relatively healthy children of the modern agebelong in the same category as Jessica. They were born with LevelOne health, but all the numerous stresses put on them by our civi-lization have made them weaker and dependent on drugs. In asense, we offer healthy children “crutches” that they don’t reallyneed, and their bodies grow up crippled. They don’t know how toget by without the immune support.

Level Two children have colds many times a year. These regu-lar colds, flu, and ear infections linger and pile up. So they typicallyhave one or two superficial chronic health problems: conditionssuch as acne, eczema, ear infections, asthma, attention disorders, oranxiety. But take note! It is important to acknowledge that thesechildren still experience acute illnesses with high fevers. This indi-cates that their bodies are capable of fighting bacteria and virusesat the superficial levels and coping with everyday stresses.

Children at Level Two have every chance and reason to moveto Level One. But reclaiming their health requires breaking thevicious cycle of overmedication. Instead of giving them antibioticsand other medications when they get an acute illness, treatmentrequires precise homeopathic prescribing and adjustments to theirlifestyle and diet. As they still possess resources good enough toshake off all the superficial problems they have, even a single com-mon cold treated with homeopathy can boost their immunedefenses to a totally new capacity. Eventually, they’ll be able toovercome the adversities of daily life on their own. Like the Level


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One farm boy I described, when the immune system is given thechance to fight on its own, it learns and becomes stronger in theprocess.

Your ultimate goal is to increase the level of your children’shealth to Level One, or as close to that level as possible. This willmake your children independent of drugs. You’ll learn what you cando as a parent to help your children overcome acute conditionswith homeopathy in Part Two. Chronic problems require constitu-tional homeopathic treatment. This approach is described in PartThree.

Level Three Health

Unfortunately, larger numbers of children are moving toward thisunsatisfactory level of health. Its main characteristic is the pres-ence of at least one deep-seated chronic illness, such as a severeform of ADHD, depression, autism, asthma, obesity, or an eatingdisorder. The hallmark of this level of health is a lack of acute dis-eases. Remember Michael from my childhood? He was seriouslydevelopmentally disabled but never had even a simple cold! Obvi-ously, he was not healthy. So what was the reason he didn’t catchcolds? As his problem was so severe and so central to his being (emotional-mental), the integrative systems of his organism werealways on the highest alert possible.

Although the same defensive systems are activated in LevelTwo children, they don’t run at such a high level. They’re simplyoverstimulated and exhausted. In Level Three children, it’s a mat-ter of survival. Their bodies continuously attempt to repair what iswrong and fail. The defenses are revved up. A flock of virusesattempting to attack the body hit a firewall of the immune systemand burn right away. There’s no room for a trivial cold. The battlefor survival renders the body unresponsive to more superficial stim-uli like cold and flu viruses.

Some parents of children with severe behavioral problemsstemming from ADHD or autism have reported that on the rareoccasions when their children develop colds with high fevers, their


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behavior transforms. As one mother said, “For this day or two, myson was ‘normal’ again.” This observation is exciting news tohomeopaths. It means that if we learn how to stimulate such chil-dren appropriately, we could cure them!

Hahnemann was the first doctor who noticed this phenomenon.He postulated that a stronger acute illness takes over the old, weakerillness. He suggested that if we give a chronically ill person a sub-stance that produces an acute, strong illness, it would cure thechronically ill. It worked. This approach is called homeopathy.Homeopathic remedies are made from substances that in healthyvolunteers or victims of accidental poisonings caused symptoms sim-ilar to what the patient has. The principle of similars, remember?

Usually, as chronically ill children get better, they start havingsimple colds. The key then is to treat these acute illnesses eitherwith medicinal herbs or if indicated, with homeopathy. Seek pro-fessional guidance on this matter. As treatment goes on, childrenget stronger and move to Level Two health, and perhaps, eventu-ally, close to Level One.

Level Four Health

This level of health is a sad situation. Most of the Level Fourpatients that I meet are adults. These individuals have severe,incurable illnesses, such as advanced cancer and long-standingschizophrenia, or they’re in the final stages of other fatal illnesses.The goal of treatment is to make them comfortable by alleviatingtheir pain, agitation, and depression. Frequently, a correctly pre-scribed homeopathic remedy causes a temporary episode of signifi-cant improvement. But because the body lacks sufficient resourcesto support a full recovery, the person reverts back to where he wasbeforehand. The next prescription may lead to another, less spec-tacular, improvement, followed by another reversion. Still, it’sworth the attempt, as the patient usually feels more comfortable fora while.


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Hering’s Law: The Direction of Cure

Using information described in the works of Hahnemann, Con-stantine Hering, one of the founders of American homeopathy,clearly articulated a healing phenomenon that’s now known asHering’s Law. This principle states that a homeopathic cure hap-pens from the inside out, from the top of the body moving towardthe bottom, and in a chronologically backward sequence. It’s asthough you were watching a movie of your life in reverse, onlyfaster, but only in terms of symptoms of disease. This natural prin-ciple was discovered during the observation of thousands ofpatients, and through the careful documentation of their chrono-logical development of symptoms as well as of the sequence of theirdisappearance after homeopathic treatment. Parents may notice ithappening when the level of their children’s health improves. It’sa terrific sign of progress when it occurs.

Many years ago, I prescribed a homeopathic remedy for Boris,a twelve-year-old boy with ADHD and other severe behavioralproblems. Over the course of two months or so, Boris stopped hit-ting other children, he began paying more attention at school, andhis teachers reported significant progress to his parents. However,even as Boris continued making strides academically and startedhaving more friends, he also developed asthma. Boris’s parents wereextremely concerned. At our follow-up appointment, they told mehow disappointed they were with the “side effects” of the remedy.

We discussed the case. At first, they didn’t grasp that the rem-edy Boris took more than two months earlier couldn’t have beenresponsible for his asthma attacks because it was so highly dilutedand was given only once. Then I asked them if Boris had ever hadthe same symptoms before. The issue hadn’t come up at his ini-tial evaluation. Suddenly both parents said, “Aha!” They told methat when their son was four, he had asthma, which was treatedfor a few years. Finally, after a course of prednisone, the asthmawas gone.


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I explained Hering’s Law and reassured them that Boris’sasthma would probably go away shortly. I also asked if there wereany other illnesses they’d forgotten to mention. They recalled thatat two Boris had many ear infections and sinus infections thatrequired numerous courses of antibiotics before they went away.They also told me that at twelve months he had severe diaperrash, especially in the front, and later some mild eczema that wentaway after a few applications of prednisone cream. Their reportsounded like a common scenario for children from the late 1980sonward.

These parents were intelligent and realized that all the formerissues might return as a result of the homeopathic treatment thatBoris received. If so, I assured them that we’d be able to deal witheach one successfully without too much pain. All the illnesses they’dmentioned seemed to fit nicely into the picture of the remedy I hadgiven to Boris. Throughout the book, you will see that the picture ofthe remedy must be an exact match with the picture of the set of symp-toms that it should be used for. Therefore, in this case, all we neededto do was to repeat the remedy when it became necessary.

My prognosis was correct. The asthma was mild and went awayrapidly. A few months later, Boris, who was still doing well emo-tionally, developed an ear infection. It was fairly significant, so I sug-gested he take a new dose of the same remedy. I know that infectionwent away, but I don’t know what happened after the next year, asBoris was doing well and I lost track of him. Although his eczemadidn’t come back during the period in which I treated him, if it had,I suspect it would follow a typical healing pattern. I’ve treatednumerous cases of eczema and psoriasis. In general, but not always,the rash initially worsens somewhat. Afterward it clears first on theface, then on the torso and arms, and then it moves finally it clearslower and lower in the body, until it disappears completely.

My eldest daughter’s recovery from measles illustrates the direc-tion of cure. First, her cough went away. Then, her rash clearedfrom her face, trunk, and arms. Finally, it cleared from her legs. Themoment the rash cleared from her feet, her fever came down.


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In my days of conventional psychiatric practice, I oftenobserved a similar direction of cure. But I’m not always able to persuade my patients that it’s a sign of progress or to teach themhow to take the opportunity to strengthen their immune system byforgoing interventions. One of my patients was suffering fromsevere, disabling depression. After completing a course of antide-pressants, his depression went away. He then developed a severebilateral ear infection. With my prompting, he remembered thatsomething similar had happened many years earlier. He’d had asevere ear infection that was treated with antibiotics for a fewmonths. To treat the reemergence of his ear infections, I suggestedhomeopathy. But he refused. Instead he chose to take a new courseof antibiotics. His treatment took a long time. The ear infectionsubsided, but his mood became significantly worse. Despite my bestefforts, it never improved to the extent it had before.

Sadly, we can see clearly that the direction of my psychiatricpatient’s treatment was wrong. According to the scheme we dis-cussed previously, the cure should have moved from the deepestlevel (his emotions and mind) to the periphery (in this case, hisears). Using conventional medications, such as antibiotics, sup-presses symptoms and drives them underground, neutralizing thishealing mechanism. Homeopathy supports the body to expresssymptoms and thus, essentially, to go back and complete necessaryhealing.

Unfortunately, there has been no funding available for a retro-spective study of the thousands of children who received suppres-sive treatments for skin problems, like Boris’s diaper rash andeczema, to see how deep the pathology goes. No one really knowswhy a particular child develops a skin disease. We say predispositionor genetics, but these are only words. Even if we were to identify aparticular gene or group of genes responsible for asthma, we don’tknow what would happen if we altered them—maybe somethingbetter or maybe something significantly worse.

The bottom line is that suppressive allopathic treatment of rel-atively superficial problems doesn’t resolve a condition’s underlying


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cause. The body has to deal with it the best it can, and it does so bycreating a new set of symptoms, usually on a deeper level. When achild shifts from one level of health to the next with the support ofhomeopathy, we are likely to see signs of former conditions thathave been suppressed reemerging. In children whose immuneresponses haven’t been suppressed with medications, such as mydaughters, we see diseases expressed and healed according to thedirection of cure. In this way, acute illnesses are not driven under-ground to take root as chronic illnesses.

Acute Versus Chronic Illness

Today millions of children have chronic illnesses, such as ongoingseries of ear infections and sinus infections. In November 2004, Iconducted a basic Internet search on the term chronic disease.Google turned up 2,180,000 Web pages. Yahoo came up with611,000. What’s the reason that chronic disease is so prevalent inour culture? Why are we facing an increase in disease? Simple. AsI’ve already stated, conventional medicine provides suppressivetreatment and transforms acute diseases into chronic ones. We areall chronically ill and have been for a long time. But our childrenin particular are getting weaker. So let me begin to address this con-cern. Homeopathic theory speaks to this issue. As you’ll see later inthis book, homeopathy also can provide us with solutions.

Hahnemann was the first physician to classify diseases as acuteor chronic. In his main work, Organon of the Medical Art, he clearlydefined them both. Let’s examine his definitions and compare themwith definitions embraced by conventional medicine.

Acute Illness

Conventional physicians define acute illness as a condition thatstarts suddenly and is short-lived. Homeopaths define it as a short-lived condition with symptoms that are different from the usualcharacteristics of the person and different from the symptoms ofany persistent condition the person has.


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Acute illnesses have a few important characteristics:

• Their onset is sudden.

• Their progress is rapid.

• They finish their course more or less quickly.

• They have a tendency to heal naturally (that is, withoutintervention).

• Without treatment, they end in complete recovery or death.(Of course, these days death is an unlikely outcome for anacute illness.)

One of the most obvious examples of an authentic acute illnessis an epidemic. Hahnemann actually distinguished individual, spo-radic, and epidemic acute diseases. Individual disease doesn’trequire any explanation. Sporadic disease means a few people indifferent locations develop an acute illness with the same set ofsymptoms. During an epidemic, a large proportion of the popula-tion suffers from the same disease. If its causative agent (a microor-ganism) is very strong, the majority of these people will havesimilar symptoms and may require the same homeopathic remedy.

Symptoms of true acute conditions are usually prominent. Ifyour child has an acute illness, you will be able to see the symp-toms. Ideally, you’ll also give your child what he or she needs toovercome the illness and remain healthy. In some cases, earlysymptoms of an illness can be seen only in the first couple of hours.This phenomenon provides parents with a great opportunity tohalt the disease in its tracks. I know of many cases when this hashappened. This book will teach you how to perform this miracle,using homeopathy, for the great benefit of your children.

Chronic Illness

Conventional physicians define a chronic illness as any disease thatdevelops slowly and lasts a long time. Homeopaths define it as along-lasting condition, and they emphasize that when it flares up,


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it may resemble an acute illness. Its symptoms will be the sameevery time there’s an episode, just pronounced.

It’s important to note that a chronic illness is not self-limiting.If left untreated or treated allopathically, sooner or later it will getworse.

Before we delve any deeper into these two categories of illness,let’s see how important the distinctions between them can be in reallife. Imagine that Dr. Watson saw many patients today. Two boys,Sherlock Holmes (who became a great detective in stories by SirArthur Conan Doyle) and James Moriarty (who became a brilliantcriminal and Holmes’s nemesis), left the most remarkable impres-sion. Both had come down with ear infections a week ago and wereseen by the doctor immediately. He gave penicillin to each. Todaytheir parents brought them in for follow-up visits. Young Sherlockwas cured. He had no pain and showed no signs of inflammationduring his ear exam. Clearly, he is a happy, healthy lad.

By way of contrast, James’s parents reported that although hehad no fever, their son was weak and complained of discomfort inhis ear. On examination, there were still signs of inflammation. Dr.Watson had to give James another prescription for a differentantibiotic. The poor Moriartys! Their unfortunate son has beenhaving those stubborn ear infections for a few years already.

As you have probably guessed, although their symptoms weresimilar, Sherlock had an acute ear infection, whereas James actu-ally had an exacerbation of a chronic illness. Sherlock is at LevelOne of health, as he doesn’t have any chronic problems. James isat Level Two of health, as he has a recurring problem. Homeo-pathic treatment would have been better for the boys than peni-cillin, because it strengthens all the defense mechanisms of thebody. Even with the medication, and perhaps because of similarcourses of medication in the past, James has developed chronic oti-tis media (inflammation of the middle ear). So he’s probably goingto have an ear infection with a similar combination of symptomsevery time he’s subjected to a significant stressor, like cold weather,an emotional trauma, or a virus.


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What could his parents do to help young James regain hishealth? They need to help him fight his illness all the way throughto the end so he can get rid of his current predisposition to earinfections. This requires professional homeopathic help. Imaginewhat could have happened if James were treated homeopathicallythe first time he had an acute cold or flu that turned into otitismedia. It would be over!

The problem with conventional treatment is that it suppressesthe body’s symptoms. Although it seems like the illness goes away,in reality the root of the problem is not being addressed. Only indi-viduals who are at Level One of health are cured. But even forthem, the unnecessary use of antibiotics is detrimental. Antibioticsalways weaken the immune system and in time move a child fromLevel One health to Level Two health. This is evidenced by morefrequent infections and a lower level of energy.

Antibiotics must be used when necessary. Fortunately, in themajority of cases, natural treatment modalities, such as homeopa-thy, are good enough and antibiotics are unnecessary. Homeopathyhelps make children stronger and more independent. Allopathicdrugs make patients depend on them more and more by virtue oftransforming acute problems into chronic ones.

The majority of children nowadays are at Level Two. They aremuch more vulnerable to developing chronic problems than ear-lier generations of children were. Back in his era, Hahnemannnoticed some cases in which even the best outcomes of treatmentdidn’t last a long time. He suggested that certain people—now themajority of our population—are predisposed to chronic illnessesfrom birth. He called this predisposition a miasm. Perhaps it’s aviable explanation for what’s happening to contemporary children.

The Theory of Miasms

Hippocrates was the first physician to use the term miasm todescribe an infectious agent. The concept has its origins in theGreek word for “taint” or “fault.” He postulated that diseases could


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be transmitted to humans through tainted air and water. Afterrediscovering the writings of Hippocrates, eighteenth-centuryphysicians adopted the belief that impure airs were responsible forthe spread of epidemic diseases. Although Hahnemann agreed thatair could carry infectious diseases, he didn’t consider the patho-genic material to be gaseous in nature. For instance, he realized thatsyphilis was a contagious blood disease that could mask itselfbehind the symptoms of many different illnesses.

Hahnemann redefined Hippocrates’ miasmatic approach. Aftertwelve years of thorough clinical observation and historicalresearch, he published a new theory in his book The Chronic Dis-eases in 1828.

According to Hahnemann, all diseases result from inheritedpredisposition. He insisted that specific morbid tendencies arepassed from one generation to the next, and he used the term mias-matic animalcule in reference to how they were transmitted. Ani-malcule means “an animal invisible to the naked eye.” Dutchnaturalist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope andhad published his observations of small living animalcules(microbes) before his death in 1723. Hahnemann, although obvi-ously thinking about microorganisms in regard to miasms, didn’tknow about DNA or genetics. In his book, he offered numerousexamples that unequivocally supported his theory.

Originally, Hahnemann identified three major types of miasms.He gave them metaphorical names: the psoric (derived from theGreek word psora, meaning “itch”), the sycotic (derived from the Greek word syco, meaning “fig”), and the syphilitic. By syphilitic,Hahnemann did not mean the sexually transmitted disease. Althougheach type of miasm clearly applies to particular diseases, the trueessence of the theory of miasms is that people are prone to develop-ing particular sets of problems. Miasms are responsible for diseases ofa chronic nature and also lay a foundation for all disease in general.An individual can have any number from one to all three of thesemajor predispositions. Some of the basic characteristics of these threemiasms are the following:


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• Psoric. The entire population shares this predisposition, as it isthe most ancient and established a foundation for all other miasms. Itsmain characteristics are a constant feeling of lack, a need to get more,and a need to be surrounded with more and more protection. This ten-dency materializes on every level of the human being: anxiety, fears,feeling cold (lack of heat), weakness (lack of strength), conservation,and a constant itch. Children born with a prevalence of psoric featuresoften are plump; cry a lot; have many fears; like to be pampered; likecomfort foods, such as milk, eggs, and pastry; need additional layers ofclothes; and are prone to frequent itchy skin eruptions.

• Sycotic. This miasm represents excess, the need to connect,and the need to spend—a tendency that manifests itself in all thedimensions of the human being, too. Children who possess thismiasm tend to be extremely sociable and sexual; love animals; havemore energy at night; have physical problems that manifest withexcess, such as discharges and skin growths; and feel warm most ofthe time. As their name suggests, sycotic eruptions resemble littlefigs. Warts are a good example of these.

• Syphilitic. The main characteristic of this miasm is destruction—aimed outwardly and inwardly. It is not a reference to a sexuallytransmitted disease. I hope none of your children is born with pro-nounced syphilitic tendencies. These children are prone to behav-iors such as torturing animals and teasing or tormenting theirsiblings. They may also be self-destructive, possibly depressed andeven suicidal—sometimes at a very young age. Syphilitic physicalproblems would include bleeding ulcers and such.

Let me reiterate, microbes do not cause the miasms. The theoryof miasms is not another, more exotic way of talking about genetics.Many generations ago, microbes and possibly other influences—wedon’t know exactly what—caused changes in our ancestors. Thesemorbid, or unhealthy, tendencies (miasms) were then passed alongto their descendants from one generation to the next. Thus a famil-ial predisposition was created to react to significant stressors of anykind in a predictable way.


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If an individual with pronounced sycotic tendencies wereexposed to gonorrhea, symptoms would flourish quickly in that per-son. But only a small percentage of people exposed to gonorrhea goon to acquire the miasm. They’re either born with it or not. Itwould take substantial exposure to acquire a new miasm of anykind. Of course, once it did set in, a miasm would be passed on toall succeeding generations.

A common misunderstanding about this theory is to believethat the different miasms are assigned to particular illnesses. In real-ity, any illness can represent various miasmatic tendencies. It justdepends on what stage the illness is in. For example, a person suf-fering from depression may be uncommonly anxious at the onset ofthe illness, reflecting a psoric stage. Then the person may becomeextremely irritable, reflecting a sycotic stage. Finally, if the depres-sion is left untreated, this individual might develop strong suicidaltendencies, which would represent a syphilitic pathology.

Our understanding of miasms has expanded since Hahnemann’sday. Currently, homeopaths distinguish as many as ten differentmiasms. What’s important for you to understand, as a parent inter-ested in sustaining your children’s well-being, is that the theory ofmiasms is groundwork for how homeopathy is practiced. It is a par-tial explanation for why numerous layers of illness may be presentin the same individual.

Any time chronically ill children are brought to my office fortreatment, I know that their multiple layers of disease probablywere created not as much by their miasmatic predispositions as byother modern problems, such as the following:

• Attempts to suppress symptoms of past acute illnesses withallopathic drugs

• Side effects of medications

• Unreasonably aggressive vaccination schedules

• The high level of daily stresses provided by the modernlifestyle


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The majority of homeopathic practice is devoted to peeling offmultiple layers of illness, if they exist. The ultimate goal is alwaysto restore Level One health. In the next chapter, we’ll explorehomeopathic remedies, and you’ll begin to understand how theprinciples we’ve been discussing can very effectively, and easily, beput to use.


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